Chapter 3 Tati #2
Not thrilled by Raven’s explanation, I mutter a string of fucks and shits as I call for the dickhead slumlord’s death.
Seconds later, a black Town Car arrives. I tap on the glass, and when the response taps match my birthday, I get in the car.
Sliding into the backseat, I let the leather welcome me in its arms. The intoxicating scent of calm fills the air, forcing the tight set of my shoulders to relax. Inhaling, I bask in the woodsy, clean aroma that makes me feel like I’m back at my favorite spa.
I glance up, ready to ask what the driver is wearing, when two swirling amber-brown eyes, perfect like a ten-year-old aged bourbon, are already on me.
They stir a memory—one itching beneath my skin to remember but stubbornly refusing to show itself.
I’m not sure how long our gazes lock, but as I part my lips to ask the nagging cliche ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ question, the car stops.
“Your bike will be on the eleventh floor. Three parking spaces to your left of the elevator.”
Buttery intoxicating. It’s the only way to describe his voice. My pussy clenches, calling out to the only person she’s ever bowed for.
I’m frozen in place. My hand—refusing to open the door and disrupt this magnetic connection.
I try to see more of the driver, but like all our drivers for these types of missions, we don’t see their faces.
The only reason this is safe is that it involves three to four dozen men specifically chosen and trained to handle rushed pickups.
“Lyssa!” The shout of my field name jostles me, and I blink my vision clear, quickly turning away and exiting the car.
I stand, but don’t move as I try to find my footing like a newborn fawn. Once I’m sure I won’t collapse and embarrass myself, I strut my ass to my bike. A box, perfectly wrapped with a crimson red bow, sits on the seat.
Peering into the night, my hackles rise until I see it.
Chuckling, I grab the stuffed fox.
He strikes again.
The eyes… the smell… the voice. It takes moments for everything to click. I whirl around to see headlights disappear from view.
“Fuck,” I hiss, both pissed and elated. He was so close. The closest he’s been since that night.
Unwilling to unbox whatever’s inside out in the open, I secure the gift and hop on my bike. Then, without a word, I ride the safe route back to headquarters.
“Debrief in thirty,” Raven states, and I grunt my understanding before cutting the connection.
I breeze by everyone, offering only half smiles and quick waves.
My feet don’t stop until I’m outside my suite. Eye scan, fingerprint scan, and blood match verified before my door slides open. I don’t even bother to take off the boots or the dress that I hate wearing. I’m laser-focused.
Instead, I stride to my bedroom, greeted by Lettie.
She rubs her body against my leg and purrs.
“Hey girl,” I murmur, stopping long enough to rub her favorite spot between her ears.
“Let me just put this away first.” She quietly follows me, stopping only when I do to open the walk-in closet door.
Punching in the code, a snick sounds, revealing my safe.
I follow the same protocol as I did to enter my room.
The lock disengages and opens to a room where all of my most prized possessions are kept.
Weapons, tactical gear, whatever information about my biological parents that I could take from the Gordon family, and the walls displaying every gift I’ve ever received from B.
From jewelry to preserved severed hands, he’s spared no expense to spoil me.
My pussy clenches at his last gift. He sent the femur of a man who yelled racial epithets at me in the grocery store after I kicked him in the shin for touching my ass as he recorded it.
And they say the romance of courting doesn’t exist in the 21st century.
Kicking off my boots and tearing off the dress, I sit in my lacy boyshorts on my giant sofa bed.
Giddy with excitement, I pick up the card, flip it open, and snort.
To: My little fox.
You better play with my pussy somewhere I can see.
B
“We got another surprise, Lettie.” She stretches, sniffing the gift in my hand.
Tearing the box open, my eyes land on a jar, and I squeal, jumping on my bed before I remember the contents of the jar could spill.
“Deputy Chief Zachary Wailin,” I spit. The name, like a poison coating my tongue.
This fucker makes crooked look straight when compared to him.
His hands are steeped in blood—his pockets lined with the rich criminals who make him willingly ignore the unspeakable horrors the rich and powerful commit each day.
“Sometimes you need to fight evil with more bloodshed, don’t we, Lettie?
” Her hazel eyes take me in, already knowing where this is going.
“They say violence only begets violence. But I say sometimes you have to knock some sense into a bitch with a barbed-wire bat for them to understand that if they go low, I go past hell.”
Pointing to the jar, I continue, “Case in point, Zachary Wailin.” This poor excuse of a man beat his wife senseless, countless times, before he raped and killed her with the other twisted fucks he rubbed elbows with.
My eye twitches thinking of the images of what was left of her.
It was plastered all over the news. There was so much irrefutable proof.
His wife’s family went through all of the proper legal channels to get justice.
Did they get it, though?
“Fuck no,” I snap, catching Lettie off guard, and in true feline form, I get her version of a what the fuck, Talia eye roll before she hops off the bed, slinking across the room and curling into a ball by the window.
So, you could go that route… but why would you?
The justice system favors those with money and plenty of it.
Prisons are filled with the wrongfully accused and convicted, while the most vile of humankind sit down for their six-course meal charity galas under the guise of raising funds for the needy, when it’s actually one of the largest human trafficking rings worldwide.
Is vigilante justice not still justice?
Eyeing the hand floating in the jar, my skin heats, imagining how Brax killed him. I can only hope it was slow and painful.
Did he scream with terror and pain?
That thought makes chills run along my spine.
Did he make him swallow his balls?
My nipples tighten, the cool air making me increasingly aware that I needed to come.
Springing off the sofa, I stride toward my ruby red custom-made Tantra Chair, placing my new gift front and center.
Pressing the remote, a circular hole opens, revealing my mechanical dick.
Then, I gather all my supplies, stopping before the jar and peering into the dead fucker’s eyes, and exclaim, “Why buy a woman flowers when you can give her heads?”